A Message from Bob – Thanks to my computer’s ongoing Carnival of Ever Changing Problems, this article has become a three parter instead of two. The pictures for this and the conclusion of the Sgt Pepper and Beatles Dissertation (no longer ‘Short’) will run as soon as possible next week, when this damn machine stays stable…wish me luck.

Once again, Life has conspired to delay a column, this one being Part Two of the Sgt. Pepper/Beatles thread. It will be posted this coming Friday.

In the meantime, here are some related items from past columns, a little more back story for the uninitiated, and some amusing pictures that prove Sgt. Pepper has always been an obsession with some people…especially musicians.

The Family Tree had just played a one night stand at Portland, Oregon’s Crystal Ballroom, a beautiful recently cleaned up and renovated dance hall on the 3rd or 4th floor of a landmark bldg, complete with floor to ceiling windows and a ball-bearing sprung dance floor that moved and undulated under the dancer’s feet.

It was the end of the night, and time to head to Hung Far Low for Chinese food, or back to the motel to get high or crash, just as soon as the Fugs (the headliners of the show) cleared their gear off the stage so we could tear down our PA and pack up.

It was just after 1:00am on the 31st of May, 1967

That’s when David Crosby walked into the ballroom with a 10 inch reel of tape under his arm….

It’s snowing!!!! Not those big, fat, fluffy flakes where one can almost cover your face. But it’s snowing…. Sigh. The grey, dull days of January with just a mere hint that the sun actually exists…..which begs the question, why doesn’t BellCanada hold their “Let’s Talk” campaign on Blue Monday? That makes infinitely more sense than say, Robbie Burns Day. Why in heaven’s name would you pick the 25th of January for mental health awareness??? According to a number of sources, the term “Blue Monday” was coined by holiday company Sky Travel in a 2005 press release. Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at Cardiff University, had come up with a light-hearted formula to determine the most depressing day of the year which commonly falls on the third Monday in January. It’s now a worldwide phenomena. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and the term is used repeatedly by companies and organizations (there’s even a BlueMonday.org) and stories in all sorts of media abound. Newspapers recommend taking the day off, there are various sites that will calculate, on a yearly basis, which Monday is going to be “blue” so you can prepare…..the power of suggestion. Although the entire idea is considered pseudoscience by the scientific community, Blue Monday is not going away anytime soon. Did you know mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as any other colour?

Editor’s Note – Originally posted on January 21st 2015, this column bears repeating. Proud to say our track record is pretty good for sniffing out greatness in a sea of popular, financially successful mediocrity, but the continued confusion regarding the differences in worthiness and rose-coloured glasses steeped in nostalgia, needs to be addressed. When it comes to Greatness, consider the majority of what you hear on terrestrial radio as nothing more than Alternative Fact.

Something short and bittersweet for DBAWIS this time; words I quickly put to paper – originally for Outer Shell Magazine I believe it was – all those years ago regarding a man who, I’d bet, many of us still reflect upon very frequently indeed.